The subject matter disclosed herein relates to broadcasting and reception of media content and the transmission of user or receiver-tailored instructions or content based upon analysis of selected broadcast content preferences.
The distribution of multimedia content has undergone very substantial change in the past decades. Traditional broadcasting involved emission of signals over bands of the electromagnetic spectrum, with receivers (e.g., radios and televisions) collecting the emitted signals and decoding them for replay of the broadcast content. While this continues to be a very important paradigm, it is increasingly supplanted by satellite and cable services. While traditional “airwave” broadcasts are clearly “one-way”, allowing for no feedback on program selections and preferences, satellite and cable services afford some limited degree of user communication, such as for selection of so-called “pay-per-view” content.
Even these models are increasingly challenged by developments of Internet-based approaches that are highly individualized by their very nature. That is, an ever-growing amount of the content traditionally available over broadcast, satellite and cable media can now be had by visiting a website via a conventional browser application, and downloading the content, or more readily, playing it in real time or near real time. Services offered over cellular networks (e.g., on handheld telephones, “smartphones”, personal digital assistance, and so forth) operate in much the same way from the point of view of information exchange and user experience.
While such developments have dramatically changed the broadcast landscape, considerable gaps remain in and between these content delivery solutions. For example, extremely limited or no link is available between programming selections actually made by viewers (or listeners) of broadcast content and the content providers. For many years dedicated services, such as those performed by Neilsen Media Research and others, have allowed for monitoring of viewer selections and habits. However, this information has been used for very long-term planning (e.g., of broadcast season-scale investment in current and future program production). The information is not collected or processed in a manner to permit more immediate (e.g., during a broadcast) changes. Moreover, such information is not used to customize the entertainment experience of the individual audience participant.
Conversely, Internet-based delivery techniques provide extremely user-customized content, such as advertisements, product offerings, and the like, often based on accessing and storing of user information either on the user system or elsewhere. Identifiers, such as “cookies” are commonly downloaded and referenced to determine user or system preferences, histories, and so forth. However, such analysis is based on visits by users to specific sites, which themselves transmit packetized information requested by the user on demand. Cellular technologies currently behave in much the same way. “Broadcast” content is not of this nature; it is transmitted to any and all potential audiences without regard to the selections made by individual users or viewers.
There is a need for improved techniques that can bridge a gap between broadcast (i.e., unidirectional) dissemination of multimedia content and the provision of user or receiver-customized content or control via a bidirectional media.